“Because I kissed you.”
The ass obvious, at last!
She made no reply. Perhaps he hoped for shy denial—for some diffident evasion anyway. Her unembarrassed silence troubled him because he had not really harboured the fear he pretended.
Now, however, the possibility made him uneasy.
“Glance into your mirror, Eris,” he said lightly, “and tell me how I could have helped what I did.”
Her face, partly averted, remained so, unflushed, unresponsive.
Hattie opened the kitchen door and looked in, bulking like a vast, dark cloud.
“You may come in and clear up,” said Eris quietly. She rose from the table and they walked into the farther room and seated themselves, she on the sofa, with an untroubled aloofness that did not encourage him to closer approach than a chair pulled up opposite her.
She had turned to some of his flowers as though to include them in a friendly circle.
“Your roses are such heavenly company,” she said in a low voice.